Little Kitten

Yesterday we heard a little kitten crying and just yelling--like he was hurt or scared. So we found him in a shed all alone. He saw Ivan and jumped and ran to the woods. Then he came back and started hanging out in a flower pot under the back steps. And he cried and cried all night. He's so wild though. He looks like Rusty from Squidbillies.
We called friends to try to figure out what the right thing to do would be and but nobody wanted to get involved because as soon as you have a plan, you're the one in charge and next thing you know, you own a kitten.
And we definitely do not want a cat. We tour and there's just...
Then early this morning he started crying and crying under my window and so we went out and he jumped and ran under the house. Then he started crying from under there. So I meowed back to him and he stuck his head out like, "What was that!?" and then...

Low five. We have a cat.

Reading Update: Infinite Jest

I just started reading this 10-year anniversary copy of Infinite Jest (with a foreword by Dave Eggers) and instead of doing a post-read entry, let's try an experiment... If you have read this or if you want to read this with me this summer then go HERE and let's make bets on who will finish this insane monster. Have you seen this thing?!
I recommend it if you liked Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius or Confederacy of Dunces... Shit like that.

Tim Lytvinenko

This is Tim Lytvinenko.

Tim is an amazing photographer but I'll get into that in a bit. To describe him is an exercise in deep thinking. To know him is so easy because he's a fun and lovable guy, but to understand him is wonderfully just out of reach. He's complex as shit! And smarter than everyone else too, which is why I like having him around. Not to figure things out for us (which he does a lot) but mostly because it's fun for me trying to keep up with him. He's way ahead. But in the direction you weren't even looking. And there are a ton of weird little surprises like, for example, he can solve a Rubic's cube in less than 3 minutes. Every time.
But his photography...
I don't know. It teaches you things about yourself. Usually when I look at photos of myself, I think, "Oh, that's good, I look pretty in that one. Oh, that's no good, I don't look pretty in that one." Last year he travelled with us and shot the tour and then, later, he presented me with a book he'd handmade of photos he thought I should have. And I was casually flipping through and came upon one in particular that totally arrested me. I stopped moving and breathing for a second. I needed all my energy to understand it.
I won't say what the content was because it's so personal, but when I saw it, I understood so many many things. So many things about myself but also about how things work. And it wasn't conceptual. It was just real. And then I was a different person.
And so Tim's photos mean so much to me. And there's more to understand than I can see so I go back to them all the time and get new stories. And I think, it's so easy to know Tim but the understanding... Here it is on paper--proof of complex thought and a reality normal people like me can't see. He has to show you.

This is his blog:
TimLyt.blogspot.com

You'll see that he's got other eyes.